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June 9, 2005

G59: Red Sox 4, Cardinals 0

While waiting through the three-hour rain delay before last night's game, I saw some of the Sox "Queer Eye" show, which was being reshown on Bravo. Full of quick-cuts and stupid jokes, it was pretty much unwatchable. ... Is it me or do Tim Wakefield and his wife look a lot alike?

One interesting thing, though: While out in the city yesterday, I saw a bus with an ad for the show on the side. It had four Red Sox players and the pink-shirt-wearing guy, but the players weren't the Red Sox at all. They had generic faces. Was Bravo not allowed to use actual photos of Damon, Millar, Wakefield, Mirabelli and Varitek?

As Dave Heuschkel points out, David Wells's starts this season have been largely feast or famine (0.57 ERA in his four wins and 13.21 in his four losses, with two average no-decisions). Against the Cardinals, he was superb: eight shutout innings, four hits, 94 pitches (74 strikes!), 23 first-pitch strikes to 28* batters and only one three-ball count. *: He faced Reggie Sanders both at the end of the fourth and start of the fifth because of a pick-off.

Once David Ortiz launched a long home run to right off Chris Carpenter in the sixth, the Red Sox offense broke through. Kevin Millar and Trot Nixon singled and Jason Varitek brought them in with a double to left center that Jim Edmonds made a pointless dive for. The ball landed about five feet in front of him. After the double, Carpenter walked Mueller and Bellhorn to load the bases, but he was able to get Wells looking and Damon on a grounder to first.

Edgar Renteria's solo home run in the ninth was his one bright spot of the entire series. ... I would have liked to see Wells finish the game off, but Keith Foulke pitched the ninth. After two quick outs, he allowed two singles before Edmonds ended it at 12:54 am with a fly to left.

Boston moved to within three games of the Orioles because Pittsburgh beat Baltimore 6-1. The Yankees thumped the Brewers 12-3, thus winning one of three games in Milwaukee. Since beating the Red Sox on May 27, New York has lost nine of 11.

Off today, and then on to Wrigley Field, where the Red Sox have never played (the Chicago games of the 1918 World Series were played in Comiskey Park).

I watched the show too and while some of it was painfully difficult to watch (the wives sitting at Dunkin' Donuts), I found myself smiling quite a bit.

Mirabelli looked like he was gonna sock someone the whole time, but seeing Wake's face pop awake when they were ripping off his neck hair cracked me up.

I think if they had followed a bit more of the typical format - got rid of the stand around wives, had better conversations with each player, then did the whole little league thing, it would have been great.

Every frame seemed so cluttered - so many players, so many QEs, and so many wives. Just messy.

Other cast? I've never watched the show bfeore, so I didn't make the visual connection.

Yeah, there were some chuckles, Wake and Millar yelping among them. And the whole charity thing for the kids was obviously good. Seeing the kids chant "Fab Five! Fab Five!" as the cast drove off in their convertibles was amusing.

"stand around wives ... so many wives"

Well, they have to make sure we all understand -- and don't go more than 45 seconds without having it pounded into our heads again -- that these baseball players are NOT GAY!

The funny (and sad) thing is all this dittohead hand-wringing about the show and the first pitch at Fenway, what will we tell the children? How will we explain it?

It's unbelievable. These allegedly fragile kids are likely pretty savvy on their own, e.g., the 10-year-old in the Globe story. The comments reveal a lot more about the parents' mindset than their kids.